Yet another rule – and this applies to all feature writing, not just profiles – is that you need what’s called a ‘nut graf’. This is a paragraph or a line, near the start of the piece, that tells the reader what the article is about. It poses the question that the feature sets out to answer. So for Pierce, I’d like the nut graf to be along these lines: What made this acclaimed author suddenly shut himself off from the world – and why is he opening up now?

To ask that, of course, I’d need to get a good answer to that question. Because I have a nut graf of my own: Am I going to be fired this week?

At Victoria Station, there were unusually large numbers of people standing on the forecourt, not rushing about, and for a horrible second I thought the Underground entrances might be closed. This often happens in the mornings, as Victoria is always overcrowded and they have to shut the gates to stop a dangerous crush developing on the platforms. But it was well past the peak of rush hour and people were freely coming and going. Those commuters who were standing around outside were all facing in the same direction, towards Victoria Street, and they were all looking up at the sky.

I had been walking with my head down and my earphones in, thinking about Pierce, about what I was going to ask him. Little else had registered, apart from the coldness of the morning and the weakness of the light. I raised my eyes to see what the others were seeing.

The sky to the east – that is, towards the greater part of London – was poisoned. There are winter days when snow-filled clouds trap the land in unshifting twilight and the location of the sun is a mystery. But this occultation was deeper and darker than that, and lower and more sinister. Not storm-grey but the grey of truck tyres and industrial soot, intensifying to near-black at its thickest point. The plume. It had scented the air with a petrochemical tang that brought a solvent sting to the sinuses. I suppose I should be grateful to my neighbours for coating my sensory organs with a fine layer of pulverised brick and plaster, protecting me from the great fire’s morning bouquet.

I picked up a Metro from an untidy heap by the top of the Tube stairs. ‘Two Hurt in Inferno’ said the front page headline; a subheading added ‘Fuel Plant Blaze Rages Through Night’. On a normal morning I wouldn’t read Metro but I wanted to see more pictures of the fire, in particular more pictures from above. I can’t say what prompted this desire, but it was ardent and sudden.